How Does the Cost of College and Debt Affect Students and Alums?

Recently, President Obama toured campuses around the country to promote his latest economic priority for the middle class: "We've got a crisis in terms of college affordability and student debt," Obama told a crowd of students at the State University of New York at Buffalo. His solution? A new rating system that will incentivize affordability by tying student aid grants to a set of standards that determine the value of an education. The better the value a school provides, in other words, the more federal money it can receive. Obama also proposed capping loan payments at 10 percent of the income of recent graduates. So how much of a crisis is the cost of education to current students and recent graduates? We asked it.